The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) released a technical report warning that the planet is on the verge of exceeding the 1.5°C global warming limit set by the Paris Agreement. This phenomenon, known as overshoot, refers to the period when the global average temperature will exceed this threshold in the coming decades before being able to decline again.
The study severely questions the effectiveness of artificial carbon dioxide removal technologies from the atmosphere. According to UNEP, industrial methods that promise to store CO2 in geological depths do not have sufficient capacity to compensate for the continued advancement of the oil sector, and their potential is expected to be exhausted in less than two centuries.
The organization advocates that CO2 removal from air will not solve the climate crisis and expresses strong skepticism regarding these technologies. The report proposes a more realistic and urgent approach to address the climate emergency.
Given this scenario, UNEP emphasizes that the primary focus must be on rapid reduction of polluting gas emissions, rather than depending on technological solutions that have yet to demonstrate the ability to reverse the problem in any meaningful way.
